The Video Gaming Report

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Alright it's time for the first ever Video gaming report game of the year award(s). Read on....read on...

XBOX 360 GAME OF THE YEAR :

Mass EffectNow, if you read my review, then you had to have seen this coming. This game was definitely one of the best games I've played on My 360. I don't think this needs much explanation.

READERS CHOICE GAME OF THE YEAR:

BIOSHOCK

Well, the 9 of you have spoken, and Bioshock came out on top with 3 votes. Now while many may say "9 votes? How pathetic!", I say "wow, 9 people voted? amazing!"

Overall Game of the Year :

BIOSHOCK

Yes, that's right, Bioshock is my personal game of the year. It is by far the best story i have ever had the pleasure of playing through. Everything about it just came together perfectly. I know I never formally reviewed this game, but if I had It would have been given a 10/10. Mr. Levine should be proud, and I cannot wait to see what he churns out next

Bonus (last minute) Award :

Multiplayer Game of the Year:

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 is by far the most immersive and fun multi-player experience I've ever had. For the longest time Shadowrun was my online Game of choice, but since the release of COD4, I have not touched it. I can give you a list of why this game deserved this award, but theres no real reason too, play it for yourself and you'll experience for yourself why.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Alright, I've finally finished my first play through of Mass Effect, and I must say it was an amazing experience. Although this was a very, very good game, it does have its flaws. Firstly, the frame rate wasn't the greatest, and characters would occasionally pop in and out. The teammate AI could have used a little tweaking, and the fact that your teammates occasionally get stuck, or just plain wont move at all can get a bit frustrating. Also, the main storyline was well written, but it seemed just a tad short. I know, this is the first of the (supposed) trilogy, and I shouldn't really expect too much, I'm just saying I felt it could have been maybe a little longer. By no means am I saying this is a short game either. If you complete all the side quests and whatnot, this game should take anywhere from 20-40+ hours. Having rushed through the story, and not completing many side quests I completed it in about 15 hours (on the normal difficulty). Lastly, I found that the number of planets you could actually land on was disappointingly small. Now that the cons of the game our out of the way, I can sing its praises. This game is, simply amazing. Yes I know I said it earlier, but it's true. This is definitely a must have game if you own a X360, and I think it deserves Game of the Year. The storyline is very well written, and at times is so emotionally gripping, that I actually cared whether certain characters lived or died. For the most part, the voice acting in the game was good, though at times Shepard's words came out somewhat awkward. One complaint i've read on many boards is that the game is slow and boring, with hardly any action, well to answer these complaints, THIS IS A BIOWARE GAME! Bioware is known for their dialogue driven games. If you want action go play Call of Duty 4 (a great game by the way). Overall, Mass Effect is definitely worth the $60, and I Highly recommend it, provided you don't have the attention span of a Squirrel.

I recently bought Assassins Creed and its a great game with big twists, one at the very begining which i wont spoil for those who dont already know. It also has some problems, one which really halts the gameplay. Assassins Creed is about an assassin named Altair who works for an Assassins guild. The game starts off slow as your bombarded with dialogue, but it picks up shortly after. You can travel to 4 different cities, and gives you open ended exploration. In these towns you have to climb view points to get sight of the where your objectives are on the map. Once you do this the points appear on your map. You then complete these objectives to gain information about your hit, so you get the approval of the owner of the assassins bureau in each town. The missions are the same for each town and each hit, Informant-speak to a fellow brother and do something for him to get info from him (silently killing his enemies, or collecting flags). Eavesdrop-sit on a bench and listen to a persons conversation. Interrogation- beat the hell out of someone for info, then kill em. Pickpocket- i dont have to explain that one. Save the Citizen- this one isnt mandatory to do, but u get people to distract guards for you if you ever get in trouble. This leads to the biggest problem in the game, it gets extremely repetitive. It will dampen the experience for you, and makes the game get old too fast. And it glitches, not frequently, but enough to be a problem. If you are able to ignore this major downfall, then you will love this game and its a game for you. To summarize this game is very good, but has hitches that can possible kill the experience for you. I give Assassins Creed for the Xbox 360 a 3.5/5.-Ryan Falla

Friday, August 17, 2007

I'm sure many of you are more than hyped for a little game called "Super Smash bros. Brawl", set to be released December 3 2007. If you've been keeping up with the site Smash Bros Dojo, then your well aware of the following updates.

The first major announcement was that of a new Smash bros. combatant:

POKEMON TRAINER

To be honest, at first I thought he seemed to be completely out of place in a Smash Bros. game. However after reading the details, I'm interested to see how game play turns out. The Pokemon trainer does not fight directly, instead he relies on his team of Charizard, Ivysaur, and Squirtle to do the fighting for him. He can apparantly switch his team out at will, but according to various sources, switching too much will cause some sort of stamina meter to suffer. Again, I'm quite interested to see how this is going to affect game play.

The second (and most recent) major announcement was that of returning character:

PEACHNot really much to say about this, except, umm... Peach is in!

The third announcement is that of a new assist trophy :

DEVIL

Apparantly, all he does is cause the screen to... move.

And lastly, we have the announcement of a new form of collecting :

STICKERS

Apparantly you can put them... anywhere. And from the screenshot it looks as if you can collect them in game, just like trophies.

Thats all for this week's update, I guess I'll try and do this every week.